[Foundation-l] Licensing resolution

[Benj. Mako Hill]

<quote who="Samuel Klein" date="Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:05:10AM -0400">
> There are hundreds of educational sites with excellent material that
> have chosen their current GFDL license in order to be compatible with
> Wikipedia.  Some of them will not be able to decide to switch
> licensing terms by August 1; others do not qualify for the
> license-switching option in the first place.  We should make a serious
> devoted effort to reach all of them -- including informing readers
> about what is going on and how they can help preserve compatibility of
> license with their own sites.

This is very important. Wikis licensed under the GFDL after August 1st
will not be compatible with Wikimedia wikis. 

Those wikis will sometimes be able to pull from Wikimedia projects but
will never be able to merge their content into Wikimedia wikis. This is
despite the fact that many of these wikis chose the GFDL specifically to
gain two-way compatibility with our wikis.

As the group with the most to lose and as the group that introduced the
change at issue, the foundation and its broader community should devote
as much time as possible to this issue in the next two months before it
is too late.

I'm happy to see that work is already being coordinated here:

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Outreach

As many people as possible should join in this effort and spread the
word.

Regards,
Mako


-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako at atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto
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